Milton Friedman on Social Security:

Milton Friedman

The U.S. Social Security program taxes most heavily on persons with low incomes, does not provide a fair return, and causes a massive transfer from the less well off to the better off. According to Milton and Rose Friedman, “the poor tend to pay [Social Security] taxes for more years and receive benefits for fewer years than the rich—all in the name of helping the poor!” (Free to Choose (1979 p. 97)). If the same program were implemented by a business in the private sector, it would be considered a criminal offense.

BRITISH MINIMUM WAGE ACT OF 1773 DROVE THE BRITISH TEXTILE INDUSTRY OVERSEAS AND DROVE COUNTLESS BRITS INTO POVERTY

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Herbert Spencer, one of the founders of sociology, pointed out in 1850 that the British Minimum Wage Act of 1773—passed due to pressure from English weavers who believed the law would help lift textile workers out of poverty—decimated the British textile industry only 20 years later. By 1793, “some four thousand looms would be brought to a stand in consequence of the trade going elsewhere.” Few if any of the unemployed weavers recognized that the minimum-wage legislation they so enthusiastically advocated just 20 years earlier was the cause of their impoverishment.

Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (1850), page 11.

Government Supported MSNBC Network Continues to Lose Viewers

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It was recently reported that MSNBC’s government-cheerleading show “The Rachel Maddow Show” is now down to fewer than 100,000 worldwide viewers in the coveted 25-54 age range.

This news comes on the heels of disclosures by former NBC Senior Reporter Lisa Myers that NBC “news” producers worked hard to scuttle and suppress news stories showing that Obamacare was predicted to cause numerous Americans to lose their insurance.

It was revealed in 2010 that MSNBC {and the other “NBC”s} were secret recipients of government TARP bailout money in 2008, through their parent corporation, General Electric.

NASA now claims that California has only one year of water left

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We all know government agencies are in the habit of scaring people into giving government more power. Now we read in Newsweek that NASA is now claiming that Californians will be out of water within one year.

Even if true, this NASA claim should be seen as an opportunity to private-sector entrepreneurs. Instead it will likely be repeated by climate alarmist in their incessant pleas for ever-more socialism.

Al Gore: Those Who Disagree With Government on Climate Change Must Be Punished By the Government

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Former vice president Al Gore spoke to a crowd at Austin’s “South-By-Southwest” Convention (“SXSW”) and told an audience on March 13, 2015 that the federal government should “punish climate-change deniers,” and that “politicians should pay a price for rejecting ‘accepted science.’”

No doubt Galileo is looking down on America from above and shaking his head.

Even as Policymakers Add Burdens to Car Travel, Private-Sector Innovators Are Perfecting Driverless Cars

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In the past 50 years, policymakers have saddled car drivers with an immense array of rules and regulations designed to turn drivers into virtual slaves. Licenses, taxes, fees, government inspections, registrations of all kinds, traffic cops pulling drivers over at gunpoint to issue citations for minor infractions.

Upon being pulled over at gunpoint, drivers are frequently subjected to yelling, intrusive and embarrassing inquiries. Cops in some jurisdictions have been caught subjecting car travelers to body-cavity searches without warrant. On Friday and Saturday evenings–in most communities–cops menace the roadways, constantly harassing drivers and seeking to identify drivers who have had a few drinks.

But technology developed by innovators in the private sector will soon render the government’s obsession with controlling car travel as antiquated as the buggy whip. The Associated Press is reporting that innovators have perfected driverless cars to such an extent that they are preparing a 3,500-mile, cross-country trip by autonomous car.

Already there are multiple driverless cars on the roads in Michigan and California, and these cars have yet to be issued a single traffic ticket.

Autonomous cars will provide a safer means of personal transportation than a human can provide. A completely-drunk individual will soon be able to pour himself into an autonomous car and tell the car to take him home. AND THE CAR WILL DRIVE THE INEBRIATED PASSENGER HOME MORE SAFELY THAN THAT PERSON COULD DRIVE HIMSELF IF HE WERE COMPLETELY SOBER.

We must all work to keep the grubby, bloodstained hands of the state off of this new technology.

Seattle City Council Enacts $15 Minimum Wage in 2014, By 2015, Restaurants Respond With “higher menu prices, cheaper, lower-quality ingredients, reduced opening times, and cutting work hours and firing workers”

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The Seattle minimum-wage hike will go into effect incrementally over the next several years. Observers are predicting that numerous businesses will shut their doors.

Stay tuned!

Here is the link.

A Broken Model of Service Delivery: Gigantic Increases in Government Education Spending Have Had No Positive Impact on Student Performance

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Government education is a monstrous failure by any measurement. This graph shows that while government spending in education has increased faster than inflation for decades, ALL MEASUREMENTS OF EDUCATION OUTCOMES–whether SAT scores, standardized-test outcomes, or basic reading or math performances–HAVE SHOWN NO IMPROVEMENT.

The graph is from the Cato Institute.

Federal Prosecutors Now Threaten to Prosecute People Unless They Convince Their Loved Ones to Plead Guilty

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In 2008, federal prosecutors were stymied because Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, refused to plead guilty to corruption charges. (In recent years, in most American jurisdictions, roughly 80 to 95 percent of all criminal defendants plead guilty and waive their rights to trials.)

It has now been revealed that federal prosecutors approached ROBERT Blagojevich, the brother of ROD Blagojevich and asked the brother to convince Rod Blagojevich to plead guilty.

According to Michael Tarm of the Associated Press,

“While charges were eventually dropped against him, Robert Blagojevich, a 59-year-old Tennessee businessman, writes that his refusal to turn on his brother made him “collateral damage” of an overzealous prosecution that cost him his reputation, nearly $1 million in legal bills and a still unrepaired split in the Blagojevich family.”

“Before the brothers’ joint 2010 trial, lead prosecutor Reid Schar proposed that if Robert talked Rod into a guilty plea, charges against the elder brother could be reduced or dismissed, the book says.”

After the first trial ended in a mistrial, the feds dropped the charges against Robert and retried Rod by himself.

The Associated Press article is here.

World’s Paper Currencies Are Spiraling Lower in Value

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Most Americans believe–quite correctly–that the U.S. government is spending recklessly and that its central bank, the Federal Reserve, is printing currency recklessly to prop up U.S. government finances. However, almost all of the other governments of the world are doing the same thing–and most of them are printing money even faster than the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Central banking allows governments to conceal their fiscal recklessness by growing the size of government without appearing to directly tax their populations. (The increased taxes will of course be paid by future generations.) Governments love Keynsian economics and central banking because such policies and institutions allow governments to appear more fiscally sound than they are. Astoundingly, the world’s central banks have cut interest rates an unbelievable 558 times since the collapse of 2008, and most of the world’s currencies are in a continuous tailspin, along with the finances of the world’s governments.

Today not a single major world currency is backed with anything other than paper. And the world’s governments are so fiscally irresponsible that the dollar is gaining rapidly against most currencies, such as the Euro. See the Washington Post story here.